₹30 crore in just 45 days: How one bold decision transformed a boatman family’s destiny at Maha Kumbh

What once fetched them ₹1,000 to ₹2,000 per day per boat skyrocketed to ₹50,000 to ₹52,000 daily, marking an extraordinary turnaround.

One bold decision by Pintu Mahra, a boatman from Arail village on the banks of Triveni in Prayagraj, transformed his family’s fortunes. By the time Maha Kumbh ended, he had joined the elite club of millionaires, with UP CM Yogi Adityanath highlighting his remarkable success story in the state assembly.

Pintu Mahra with his kin, including his mother, Shuklawati Mahra, on the Sangam banks in Prayagraj (HT )

Pintu and his family earned a staggering ₹30 crore in just 45 days by operating a fleet of boats during Maha Kumbh. What once fetched them ₹1,000 to ₹2,000 per day per boat skyrocketed to ₹50,000 to ₹52,000 daily, marking an extraordinary turnaround.

During a discussion on the annual budget 2025-26 in the legislative assembly on March 4, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath shared a success story from the recently concluded Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj—a boatman and his family earned ₹30 crore in just 45 days. According to the CM, the boatman owned 130 boats, each generating an average profit of ₹23 lakh during the grand religious gathering.

The central figure of that story is Pintu Mahra of Prayagraj. Aged around 45, Pintu, a boatman from the Arail area of Naini in Prayagraj, said he bought 70 boats for his family before Maha Kumbh. Each boat cost ₹80,000, for which he did not have enough money. So, he had to sell the jewelry of the women in his house and even mortgage the family’s land.

The women of the household resisted the move to sell jewelry, but that did not change Pintu’s decision.

Pintu said that operating boats has been his family’s inherited work for generations. “The sheer crowd that I saw coming to Sangam during Kumbh-2019 made me realize that this time, a much bigger crowd was going to come. So, I put everything my family owned at stake and bought 70 boats, allowing the family to have 130 boats just ahead of Maha Kumbh-2025,” he shared.

“I employed around 300 youths to operate these boats, each requiring two to three persons per trip, from the early hours of the day to late evening,” he added.

There are more than a hundred members in his family, including aunts, uncles, and cousins. The women of the house also tried to stop him, and his mother even got upset with him over his decision. But he did not listen to anyone.

His mother, Shuklawati Devi, 62, now praises her son with tears of happiness in her eyes and is proud of his success. “After the death of my husband, Bacha Mahra, some years ago, our financial condition was not good. There was trouble due to ancestral enmity that had been raging for years, leading to several attacks on family members, some even losing their lives, along with long litigations and police investigations. But we recovered, and through operating boats, we attained financial stability. However, it is only now, owing to my son’s initiative of winning the tender to operate boats during Maha Kumbh, that my whole family is financially secure and happy. I distributed sweets to everyone in the neighborhood following our success during Maha Kumbh,” she shared.